family – Page 6 – The MoHo and Other Traveling Tales

Snow in November Snow in March

Home in Rocky Point Oregon: current temperature 36 Degrees F high 43 low 25 partly sunny

Winter is long in this part of Oregon. The snows start in earnest in November, with a few skiffs sometimes showing up in October. The snow can be deep, and while we can get down to zero F for a week or so, the winters aren’t nearly as bad as places like Minnesota or the Dakotas. Still, they are long. I love winter at Christmas time. I love winter in January when I can enjoy it and then take off for California. I love winter in February least of all, and ever since I moved from California to snow country in Northern Idaho back in the early 70’s I have done everything possible to get out of winter in February.

But winter in March is different. Even though it is cold and the snow is really tiresome by now, it feels different. The days are getting longer, just a bit, but it isn’t dark any more at 4:30 in the afternoon. When it snows, it is usually a bit wetter, and there are patches of blue amid the fluff of snowy clouds. The air feels different. And the birds are back.

Early in the morning I can hear them down by the lake, but they are out on the water in places we can’t get to yet with the snow and ice all around. Still, we walked down there this morning to get the mail. Gingerly picking our way through the re-frozen slush in the driveway and hoping our boots didn’t crash through the crusty snow banks down by the water. When I went in to town yesterday, in the midst of a blustery snow storm, I saw open water along the edges of the lake, and saw that the swans had returned. I only had the iPad with me, and there was traffic and snow, so it was a quick photo, but it still made me really feel the difference between the deepening winter feeling of December and the promise of winter eventually ending. Maybe not in March, but still eventually it will end.

There is an aerial survey of the birds in Klamath Basin that is updated regularly, and even back on January 30, we had almost 44,000 tundra swans in the refuge complex. I love the swans especially, and the snow geese, they look like flapping sheets in the wind when they fly in unison and rise and fall over the landscape.

Horse Fever horses in Ocala will always bring back great memories of sharing this with Bel I am still having a bit of trouble writing about Florida. My friend Bel, in my life for 19 years, passed away while I was there. I was with her when she passed, probably the hardest thing I have ever done, and yet a gift I will always be grateful for. If you read my blog in the past, you know about Bel and my visits to her, my worries over her access to health care, some of her life difficulties. This is our happy fun travel blog, how in the world do I talk about this here? I guess I just can’t. Up close family, up close friends, real words coming out of real mouths with sound, seem to be the only appropriate way for the moment. I didn’t plan to say anything at all when I started this blog, and yet some of you are those real friends with real words who were there for me on the phone and on Facebook, of all places, as I was going through it. So I needed to acknowledge that somehow after all and thank you. Enough for now.

On the way home from Florida I was so happy to have almost three full days in San Antonio with my daughter Deborah. She took off work on Thursday and Friday and we spent our time together driving around to places she loved in her new home, seeing where she worked, eating great Texas food that her sweetie prepared for us. I ate ribs and cole slaw and Texas beans and cheese bread and brisket and omigosh…the heartburn! I am not used to eating like that, but it sure was fun to let go for a few days in spite of the heartburn.

We checked out some quilt shops and picked out fabrics for the quilt I will make for her someday, we wandered off to Palmetto State Park and Lyndon B Johnson State Park, and spent a night in lovely Fredericksburg. It was cool and breezy while I was there, but the sun was brilliant and gorgeous. South Texas is a great place this time of year, even though the blue bonnets have yet to burst. The grasses are greening up, and did I mention that sunshine? Ahhhh. It was so healing to be with Deborah, who knew and loved Bel, to have her to talk with about it. I was blessed by two daughters on this trip actually, with Deanna re-routing a Tampa load to go through Ocala, where she met me for a long breakfast full of big hugs. Daughter Melody stayed with me on the phone a lot and son John called a few times as well, and of course Mo and Maryruth and my long time friend Laura from Coeur d Alene, a respiratory RN. It was wonderful to have so much support and understanding.

It was good to get back home. I did a deep clean on the house before I left, and Mo was away at her brother’s while I was gone, so we came home to a cozy, clean, wonderful home. Mo beat me home by a day, so when I returned the house was still sparkly but was WARM with a nice big fire going. Snow still on the ground, but sunshine and blue skies were wonderful. And silence. The nights are so dark and starry under the hot tub and the silence is just so SILENT! No street lights, no traffic, no trains, all the stuff of towns and cities are absent here in the forest.

We are settling in, enjoying home a bit before we decide just when to wander off to the cottage in Grants Pass and maybe get some beach time. Here at home I have a big quilt to finish binding, and fabric to play with, soil survey work waiting and all sorts of “retirement” projects that I still have yet to get to after three years as a retiree. I am never, never bored. Ever.

St Paddy's around home-002

Blogger’s Version of the Christmas Letter

Do you love them or hate them? Personally, I love the Christmas letters that we get from many people in our lives. Sure, I remember previously hearing most of what I read, but not all at once and not always. It is great to open an envelope from a long time friend and get a summary of their year, with photos of their kids and homes and favorite places. Seems as though our little group of RV bloggers has taken to doing something quite similar, with wrap-up posts of their favorite travels, photos and experiences of the past year. I love these posts as much as I love the Christmas letters, and the photos are easier to see! Sure, if I have followed you for a long time, and maybe even met you in person, your year end review will be the same for me, a review. If however, you are someone I read but haven’t interacted with a lot, your year end review reminds me of who you are and where you have been. Either way, it is wonderful to get these little summaries. Besides, it lets me see what you think was the best part of your year, what was important to you, your favorite photos. So, for me, and for you, this is my version of the Christmas Letter, the e-version. I decided to do some collages, and they are actually collages of collages. That is a lot of images, but the idea isn’t to review each image, but to get a feel for what that part of the year brought our way.

JANUARY FEBRUARY MARCH APRIL

We spent much of January in Desert Hot Springs, and in early February we took an amazing trip to Las Vegas to see Elton John and the Valley of Fire. Late February we spent time on the cold but beautiful northern portion of the Oregon and Washington Coasts, enjoying new places we hadn’t visited before. With snow at home in March, we reveled in a trip to sunny California for the Spring Equinox and gorgeous hikes at Pinnacles National Monument. In early April I drove with daughter number 1, Deborah, to her new life in San Antonio, Texas, and then came home to Easter with the local daughter number 3 and family before Mo and I took off on our amazing self guided tour of the covered bridges of Oregon.

MAY JUNE JULY AUGUST

May is full blown springtime on both sides of the Cascades here in Oregon and we enjoyed it to the fullest. We watched our tulips bloom, cleaned up the gardens, and traveled to Woodburn for the annual Tulip Festival. We also started looking for some property in Grants Pass and saw what many months later was to become our “cottage”. June is the perfect kayaking month, and in between garden chores we kayaked new lakes and reservoirs, visited friends in Oroville, and once again I took a photo of wocus lilies on Klamath Lake with the Mountain Lakes Wilderness in the background. In July we kayaked and camped some more, spent time with friends and family here at home, and enjoyed one more home town Fourth of July in Klamath Falls. In late July and August, we traveled several thousand miles for a family reunion in Colorado, adding South Dakota to our list of visited states, and took in some amazing scenery in the Black Hills, at the Little Bighorn Battlefield, Devils Tower, and the Big Horn Mountains of Wyoming, and magnificent Twin Falls in…where? Twin Falls, Idaho.

SEPTEMBER OCTOBER NOVEMBER DECEMBER

September was a month for being at home, enjoying the best time of year in our own beautiful Klamath Basin. I harvested goodies from the greenhouse, made jam and froze fruits, enjoyed many visits with friends, quilted and kayaked. By October, I was ready for the long awaited trip to Eastern Europe with youngest daughter Melody. We spent two incredible weeks seeing Budapest, Vienna, and Prague, learning about the history, art, and people and actually after 43 years, learning more about each other. It was precious time. In November Mo and I spent two fabulous weeks on the Star Princess, enjoying the magic of long days at sea interspersed with a few sunny, beautiful days in the Hawaiian Islands. Home in December to check out our Grants Pass “cottage”, the new MoHo shed, Christmas decorating and baking, family time, and beautiful deep snows.

On a more personal note, forcing myself to sit down on New Year’s Eve and New Years Day, and extricate the parts of the year past that meant the most to me is a great exercise in remembering, and in appreciation. I had to go through all the posts, through my personal calendar, through the months and months of photos. In days past I often wrote lengthy journals on New Years Eve. Some of them I can find and some I can’t, but the practice has opened my eyes to the blessings of the year and to just how much my life has evolved and changed over the past decades. Sheesh. Decades. Remember when Y2K was such a big deal? Remember when, back in the 80’s, lots of people were sure the world was going to end in 2012? That whole Mayan thing wasn’t new, it had been around for a long time. Yet here we are, all in one piece, and the world is still turning.

As I reviewed the year of going and doing, places visited, trips taken, I realized something that I knew all along. It is the people in our lives that make it all worthwhile. New friends and old, friends near and far, and Family. Capitalized. Meaning the people in our lives by blood or choice who are our chosen ones that we do life with. Everything in my life is enriched by everyone that comes into my life in one way or another. Blogger friends I have never met are somehow part of this extended world and add to its richness. Facebook, Skype, Google Plus, Blogger, Gmail, Family Tree Builder, Picasa Photos, all these electronic means of keeping closer to the people in our lives may have a bit of a downside, but for me, with my friends and family scattered around the country, the ability to reach out and connect has enriched my life immeasurably. If you are reading this, you are part of that enrichment.

HAPPY NEW YEAR 2013

A snowy, happy day in Rocky Point

When they say White Christmas, I think this is what they mean. Not only was the ground covered in deep snow, it was coming down in big fat, thick flakes, frosting hats and fur and eyelashes with cold white stuff.

I think the daily hours of shoveling and lifting have been good for me. Kinda like the gym without the boring weights. I lost almost five pounds in the two weeks before Christmas, in spite of the baking. I don’t think I can remember that happening ever. Go figure. Kevin was incredibly tickled that I managed to keep some beer from the Deschutes Brewery for an entire year. Something called the Abyss that was intense enough that I poured my glass full right back into Kevin’s glass. Whew!

Do you think that maybe cash was a good choice for the grandchildren this year? the propert response

I do think that Jeremy and Abby know an animal lover when they see one. My granddaughter Axel is amazing with both of them.

Xavier loves Mo’s rug, ever since he was very little he would immediately head for the rug to hang out. Is he actually napping with that cash in his hand?

I am pretty sure Kevin liked his fancy probe BBQ fork, in spite of the face, and you can see that Jeremy really loves having company, all those great laps to try out! I am pretty sure he likes it

Melody got a kick out her giraffes, a sweet little treasure I found at the jewelry store where she works, of course she was in on the surprise because I let her pick her favorites.

This time I set the table and was actually able to hang around and enjoy it, unlike the previous time I set a Christmas table at the Rocky Point luncheon and lasted less than five minutes before running back home sick. Soooo glad that is over, and in answer to a commenter’s question, the vertigo really has passed for now.

Sledding with the family is a tradition, so it was good that mother nature cooperated. Sledding on gravel would be uncomfortable.

We have an old sled with runners, a cheapy plastic thingy that is close to worthless, and another cheapy foamy thingy with fluorescent green something or other on it that I bought for kid sledding last year. I think I used the green thingy more than anyone. The big plastic yellow inner tubes we use for the water just don’t move on snow, so we no longer try them.

Favorite memories include big black inner tubes going down Tubbs Hill in Couer d Alene sliding into the baseball field from the steep mountain and getting bounced off those inner tubes some rather impressive distances. Too many trees on this little sledding hill to try that even if we DID have inner tubes.

Managed to sneak this photo of Melody and Kevin out in the hot tub, soaking away any kind of sledding muscle aches. Oh wait, Kevin was taking photos, not sledding. Still, not a bad way to end a family Christmas Day.

The Last of Wyoming

August 6 and 7 Falls Campground on Highway 26 west of Dubois, breezy, in the low 70’s

It’s breezy at the moment, and the vertical mountain cliffs north of the campground are a bit clearer than they were when we woke this morning. Smoke from the fires in Montana and Idaho are finding their way toward us again and dimming the brilliance of the sunshine. I am sitting in the shade by the unlit campfire while Mo splits kindling for tonight. Tee shirt and shorts are the order of the day. The sun is warm but the breeze is just chilly enough that the shade feels wonderful.

When planning this trip, I hoped to find something along the way between Thermopolis and the tourist busy part of the highway around Jackson Hole. Streets and Trips led to this Shoshone FS campground and we took our chances without a reservation. Then I read RV Sue’s account of her time both here, and at the Brooks Lake campgrounds five miles north, and I knew the choice would be a good one.

It has been a peaceful stop, even with the daytime sound of traffic moving west toward Yellowstone and the Tetons. The rally at Sturgis is now in progress, so the roar of motorcycles has dimmed to just an occasional rumble. After our hot evening in Thermopolis, (yes, I still have to write about Thermopolis, the Bighorn Mountains, the Medicine Wheel, Buffalo, and the Little Bighorn Battleground!) even the A loop seems uncrowded to us. The plans were adjusted a bit yesterday so that we could stay here two nights and have a full day to enjoy the last of the Wyoming mountains.

Yesterday was a short trip, only 155 miles or so between Thermopolis and this park, with a Wal-Mart stop at Riverton in between. Some parts of Wyoming are simply breathtaking, but other parts seem like long stretches of a landscape only a geologist could love. When we reached Dubois, the mountains again lifted to the west. This part of the west gives full meaning to what John McPhee described so well in “Basin and Range”.

I thought of RV Sue in the laundromat, telling her great stories at the only place where you can get any kind of internet. We haven’t had a decent signal in several days now. We don’t even have a cell phone signal here and in the park in Thermopolis, the phones wouldn’t work at all and the MiFi struggled along with a single bar.

We decided that even though loop B was completely empty yesterday, we wanted electricity, and so entered loop A hoping for two sites together. Two sites appeared, and just in time, since the two rigs following us were hoping as well. I think this loop filled up last night, but when we went walking in loop B it was still empty.

Nancy and Roger and Mo and I are still enjoying or tandem travels. This is new for us, since we usually travel alone, but it has been working out just perfectly. Mo and I are somewhat the tour guides, with the responsibility of planning the routes, looking for gas, choosing the overnights, deciding how far we can go in a day. Whenever I ask Nancy or Roger if they have a preference, their answer is invariably, “Whatever you two want is fine with us”. Talk about easy!!

We have been sharing our evening meals, with most of them a joint effort, and now and then we do the big camp breakfast complete with hash browns and toast. Tonight is steak night, and I’ll bring the salad, Nancy does the Texas toast and we each cook our steaks. Roger even has a pair of titanium sticks for cooking marshmallows. They don’t get hot at all over the fire and I have some of those huge camp marshmallows left over from who knows when. I don’t even like marshmallows, but still love to do the campfire thing.

We walked around the campground last night, took pictures of the waterfall, and spent a lot of time laughing at the dogs while they played in the Wind River that winds through the campground. Jeremy really enjoyed this spot as well, since it was open and spacious enough that I could let him run around outside on his own. He is really so good about it, but every once in awhile he decides that he is NOT ready to go in and will go under the rig and laugh at me.

Today we decided to take a leisurely drive (five miles of very washboard road) up to Brooks Lake for some kayaking and hopefully to hear more stories about the mama grizzly and her two cubs that have been hanging out there. Mama is gone it seems, at least the camp host Richard hasn’t seen them in a couple of weeks. We also discovered to our dismay that in order to launch our kayaks in Wyoming, we are required to have a Wyoming boat sticker and an additional invasive species sticker for each boat. A bit too expensive for one afternoon of kayaking.

Instead we parked at the boat launch area and wandered off toward Jade Lakes and enjoyed the part of the trail that borders Brooks Lake. We thought better of hiking the four miles round trip to the top since we were in our kayak sandals with the dogs and had no bear spray and no water. It was a pretty walk, and at the time we didn’t know that mama bear wasn’t around, so we were a little nervous now and then as we approached buffalo berry thickets.

It feels great to slow down a bit, and this will be our last day in cool, timbered mountains. Mo built great campfires, surprising that they are allowed in this kind of fire season, but the fire circles at this campground are especially nice, with strong iron grates, and a space beneath the fire box to store kindling.

It has been wonderful to have enough space to let Jeremy outside to explore the campsite and play with Jackson, his new found best buddy. Jackson loves the kitty and will lick Jeremy’s ears and follow him everywhere he goes. Abby isn’t as affectionate with Jeremy, and since Jeremy grew up with dogs, he misses that interaction. He often snuggles up to Abby and she looks at us saying, “really?!”

Tomorrow we will again have internet access, television, and probably traffic. Twin Falls is next on the list.

It’s a Blur

Alliance, Nebraska. Cloudy and sputtering rain and wind and temperatures changing every few minutes.

Usually, when rv-ing somewhere, I have maps and photos to help me keep track of where I have been and where I am going. I write leisurely stories with pretty pictures that remind me of our tours and travels and have fun doing it. At the moment, at the Sunset Motel and RV Park in Alliance, Nebraska, the last four days are just one big happy blur.

We were camping in one spot, driving nowhere in the MoHo, and five rigs and several tents filled up the group site at Bear Lake Regional Park near Morrison, Colorado, within site of just the tips of the red rocks of Red Rocks Amphitheater. I took literally hundreds of photos, mostly of family, and many duplicates of group shots trying to get all those faces turned toward me and everyone’s eyes actually open. I have managed to keep up with photo processing, but I have a feeling that the Verizon signal in this remote little Nebraska town isn’t exactly photo friendly.

I did think it might be nice to throw in an update for friends checking in, so here it is, sans photos. We are fine. We had breakfasts, and dinners out, and bike rides and some kayaking, and walking and laughing but no campfires. In spite of that, we managed S’mores over the bbq grill for some city kids who experienced them for the first time.

Today as we left Colorado, I stopped in Sterling to see my grandson, married there just last September. Our big group has dropped to just two rigs, with Roger and Nancy parked beside us and ready for our travels to South Dakota tomorrow. I’ll try for some photos, but in case it doesn’t work, at least you know we are no longer out of touch. There will always be time later to catch up and write about everything in more detail